


Comfrey and Calendula

by MycroftRH



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blanket Permission, Gen, Happy Ending, Medieval Medicine, Podfic Welcome, Soft Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, The Hands of a Witcher are the Hands of a Healer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22816153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MycroftRH/pseuds/MycroftRH
Summary: It’s a couple years after the trip to the Edge of the World that someone asks Jaskier why, when Toss A Coin says he got his teeth kicked in, they’re so healthy and straight.  He’s rather drunk and rather distracted and answers “Uh, Witcher healing magic - miss would you care to share a - ”  He mostly forgets about it but next time someone asks he gives the same answer as it seemed to work last time.  And he keeps giving it, and it starts to spread.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 10
Kudos: 102





	Comfrey and Calendula

**Author's Note:**

> This is almost entirely based on Netflix canon, with just a couple tiny references to other versions of canon. I make even less pretense of a coherent timeline than Netflix does; there are some dates here that I know for a fact don't line up with official canon.
> 
> Contains minor character death (no named characters) and minor medical/gore type unpleasantness (injuries and illness, not graphically described). Also while no sexual activity occurs onscreen there is a minor character who is a sex worker by profession. (It's infinitely tamer than the series on all possible axes, tbh.)
> 
> Yennefer and Ciri appear in the second chapter/half/part.

It’s a couple years after the trip to the Edge of the World that someone asks Jaskier why, when Toss A Coin says he got his teeth kicked in, they’re so healthy and straight. He’s rather drunk and rather distracted and answers “Uh, Witcher healing magic - miss would you care to share a - ” He mostly forgets about it but next time someone asks he gives the same answer as it seemed to work last time. And he keeps giving it, and it starts to spread.

A few years later, Geralt and Jaskier (mostly Geralt) have defeated a cockatrice, failed to collect their fee, and are settling to rest at the outskirts of town. A woman appears at their tent carrying a small bag of copper and a child with a badly cut leg, asking for the Witcher to please use his healing magic. Geralt’s bemused - although he’s shrewd enough to give Jaskier a “we’ll talk about this later” look - but he has plenty of experience with cuts, and he grabs some numbing herbs and sews it up tidily. It is late into the night before the child’s well enough to go home, though, and they never get to the conversation that Geralt silently promised.

The next time they’re in the area, months later, another mother turns up with a hysterically sobbing little boy who’s been burned trying to get himself an extra share of his favorite stew. Geralt doesn’t actually fight fire-breathing monsters all that often, but he got burnt plenty when he was a child learning to use Igni. He mixes up a salve with comfrey, St. John’s wort, and calendula, and maybe a few things a little more exotic, and carefully smooths it on, with the soft touch he wishes he’d gotten, and the boy finally stops crying. Geralt sends them home with a small clay vessel full of the salve, and the mother doesn’t have coin to repay them with but she gives them a whole pot of the coveted stew and it is, indeed, worth getting burned for.

First in that town and then in others more people come with injuries that Geralt fixes up - he splints broken fingers, uses his strength to carefully guide dislocated shoulders back into joint, sews enough to make a dozen quilts. Some start to come to him with mild ailments, colds and food poisoning and headaches, things that for the most part will go away on their own in a few days.

He gives most of them fairly simple herbal salves and drinks that he could make in his sleep - a bit of echinacea and willow bark here, some chamomile and evening primrose there - but once in a while he’ll sneak in something a bit more potent. A few drops of numbing venom from the jaculus he killed last week. A bit of rebis or hydragenum if he has any to hand. Some people repay him with coin, some with food, some with whatever they have to spare.

As he starts to have repeat customers, they begin to try to speak to him as he’s caring for them or their children. Many of the women know herbal remedies themselves, passed down from their mothers and their mothers’ mothers, so as he’s stirring and grinding and boiling they offer their own knowledge. Some of them repay him with their own stores of herbs and ingredients, or tell him of places to find them growing.

One night a young woman - Lily, a lady of pleasure whom they’ve ‘met’ before - comes stumbling up the stairs of the inn they’re staying in and collapses on the floor before them, babbling, half out of her mind with fever. She has the working girl’s sickness, and only a few days, perhaps hours left to live. Geralt, with nothing to lose, gets a few of his Witchers’ potions, waters them down, mixes them, combines them with some of the herbs he’s been given. Holds Lily up with one arm behind her shoulders and lifts the mixture to her lips with the other.

She seizes - gasps in a lungful of air - throws her head back and ceases to breath at all as her eyes turn black and foamy spittle reddened with blood comes to her lips. Jaskier cries out - “You’ve killed her!” - and Geralt kicks him into silence with a spare foot and a murderous glare.

They both stare, breathing hardly more than she is, for an eternity before she coughs, inhales, lifts her head. Her eyes are still black but they seem to have awareness behind them, as they haven’t since she entered the room. Lily turns her head side to side, breath steadying, and Geralt can feel her fever lowering moment to moment through his arm against her back.

Jaskier bends down near her face. “Ma’am, I would just like to say that we cannot be held liable for any possible side-effects of - ”

Geralt kicks him again.

By the morning, Lily’s thin and pale still from the bleeding and starvation of the past months - and her eyes are still solid black - but her fever’s gone and her strength, and a bit more, has returned to her limbs. She thanks them and takes her leave before the innkeeper’s morning rounds, as is proper for her profession.

They stay in town for a few weeks; entirely coincidentally, of course, not to check on their patient. By the time they leave, Lily’s business is apparently booming - surprisingly many men and women rather enjoy her new eyes, and, so the rumors say, she seems to be able to go just a bit longer and more energetically than any of the other sporting ladies in town.

Others come to him in the night, show him the blood dripping from their gums, beg him with bright, sunken eyes to help. He turns away most, but the few who are truly at the end of hope, who have no other chance, he tries to save. It doesn’t always work. A few leave his room fine and fall a few days later. One dies in his arms, never breathing again after seizing. But each time, he learns, he sees what humans can handle and what they can’t, what herbs help them tolerate the potions better.

Only a very few leave both altered and alive, like Lily. But there are some, more over time, scattered across the landscape, farmers who can till their fields an hour longer, grandparents who mysteriously never get ill during cold season, shepherds who can wrestle their unruly rams. People with ice-white skin or black eyes or teeth just a touch sharper.

Wealthy merchants begin to call him to their death beds, in secret, then noblemen, then kings and queens. They're called to the birth of a princess, despite Jaskier's protestations that they are definitely not midwives. They are unable to save the mother, but discover the curse that killed her just in time to save little princess Adda from being born a striga. The king offers them a permanent place from which to offer care in his kingdom - on the condition that they never share why it was granted. They accept, on the condition that the king understand they will continue to travel, and only use the taigh-eiridinn when they find themselves in Temeria.

It's not long before other kingdoms, not wishing to lose the services of the Healing Witcher to Temeria, start to offer them taighean-eiridinn as well.

**Author's Note:**

> I took a fascinating course on medieval technology and science a few years ago - apparently there was rather more of it than we generally now realize. One of the most interesting things, on which I ended up writing a research paper, was how much practical medicine was done by women. Medieval male doctors were futzing about with humors and spiritual ailments and the like - and admittedly making impressive strides in surgery, towards the end of the period - but most day-to-day medicine that actually got things done was by women. They had complicated networks of recipe exchange, like a church group swapping casserole recipes, except that they would swap medicine/medical treatment recipes - often highly effective ones. The higher status you had (not necessarily politically/monetarily/by birth; social leadership in the female community would do it) the more recipes you had and the more effective, thus valuable, ones you had. We're starting to find copies of the books in which those of the women who were literate wrote down their collections of medicines. And, again, since these were made entirely for practical purposes, despite being formed mostly by trial and error many of them worked very well.
> 
> So, ANYWAY, the premise here is basically "Geralt accidentally gets into the secret women's medicine network, combines it with a little magic, and ends up revolutionizing medicine including creating a system of hospitals, creates a large semi-mutant population across the continent, and leads to a happy ending for damn near everyone, all because Jaskier got caught out in a lie."


End file.
